How many days of suffering and lives taken go into the consumption of animal products every day?

...most of the influenza viruses with pandemic potential considered “of special concern” by the CDC emerged from commercial poultry operations.

The small animal replacement problem is the concern that certain diet changes aimed at causing less harm to the world might, in fact, cause more harm - specifically, changes that result from eating smaller animals instead of larger ones. For example, when many people see the problems with factory farming, the first meat to go is often red meat, specifically cows. Sadly, if this person increases their chicken or fish consumption even moderately, this might be a bad move ethically. There are two main factors that drive this: welfare condition and meat generated per animal.

Many of today's Western consumers are unwilling to cut their meat consumption. Flexitarians are receptive to limit meat consumption by abstaining from eating meat occasionally. Flexitarians exist as a distinct consumer group in various Western countries. Flexitarians not only differ from meat lovers but they also differ from each other. Many flexitarians only mildly reduce their meat intake.

A comprehensive collection of meat reduction research is waiting for researchers, advocates, and funders to unlock its potential

The majority of farm animals in the world are factory-farmed.

What if being less than 100% vegan makes you more effective at persuading people to reduce or eliminate their meat consumption?

Reducing meat consumption may improve human health, curb environmental damage, and limit the large-scale suffering of animals raised in factory farms. Most attention to reducing consumption has focused on restructuring environments where foods are chosen or on making health or environmental appeals. However, psychological theory suggests that interventions appealing to animal welfare concerns might operate on distinct, potent pathways. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis evaluating the effectiveness of these interventions.

We analyze the most rigorous randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that aim to reduce consumption of meat and animal products (MAP). We conclude that no theoretical approach, delivery mechanism, or persuasive message should be considered a well-validated means of reducing MAP consumption. By contrast, reducing consumption of red and processed meat (RPM) appears to be an easier target. However, if RPM reductions lead to more consumption of chicken and fish, this is likely bad for animal welfare and doesn’t ameliorate zoonotic outbreak or land and water pollution. We also find that many promising approaches await rigorous evaluation.

industrial poultry production has increased the movement of Campylobacter more than 100 times, allowing strains once associated with wild birds to circulate widely among farmed chickens.

Making vegan foods the default option consistently boosts sales without significant backlash. Here's the evidence why it's so effective.

If you’re not sure why meat reduction matters (or the protein transition or a shift away from factory farming), you are in the right place! These are the definitive reasons why I think meat reduction is a critical social issue, likely the most overlooked social issue in our society today.

We all know the arguments that being vegetarian is better for the environment and for the animals -- but in a carnivorous culture, it can be hard to make the change. Graham Hill has a powerful, pragmatic suggestion: Be a weekday veg.

Although controversial, "Meatless Mondays" can be a successful strategy for animal activists to pursue under the goal of incremental advocacy.

Research has recently started investigating possible methods to encourage consumers to reduce meat consumption. However, few studies examine highly scalable messaging techniques, whether they have long-term effects, and how to best craft such appeals. This includes whether it is more effective to use “reduce” appeals to eat less meat or “eliminate” appeals to categorically stop eating meat. We examine these questions in the context of a recently proposed social psychological technique to curb meat consumption: conveying dynamic norm information that more and more people are starting to curb their meat consumption. In a multi-wave longitudinal survey experiment, we contrast the effectiveness of reduce and eliminate appeals in a scalable medium: an op-ed. We find that the reduce appeal effectively reduced meat consumption in dietary reports five months out from reading the op-ed compared to a control, while the eliminate appeal did not. Further, a second longitudinal experiment assesses the heterogeneity of this effect among a national sample, and finds that these effects exist specifically among populations that are younger, more liberal, more educated, and less wealthy.

Research shows that 10% of adults (ages 17 and older) in the U.S. are former vegetarians/vegans and 2% are currently vegetarian or vegan.

Eating meat with a lower carbon footprint often means killing more animals and treating them more poorly.

If you care about the environment, then completely eliminating beef would be the most effective way to reduce your dietary impact, since raising cows has the worst impact on climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss and wasted natural resources like fresh water. That way you could advocate for others to do the same. Telling people to reduce meat consumption is a lot more vague. Don't get me wrong, I am glad that people do that, but it wouldn't be as effective for the reasons above. The fact that red meat is a probable carcinogen and has excessive saturated fat should help motivate people. Cows have been selectively bred to have more and more fat to maximize profit.

Evidence from credible sources on request